Ukraine starts planning for post-war tourism

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Ukraine will this week launch a marketing campaign for worldwide vacationers – telling the world that it has the infrastructure, resorts and repair to help guests.

On the eve of the world’s largest journey occasion, ITB in Berlin, the chair of Ukraine’s State Agency for Tourism Development has advised The Independent that tourism will likely be a necessary a part of post-war restoration.

Mariana Oleskiv mentioned: “We welcome our guests if they don’t come with guns.

“Any money that people will spend in Ukraine will help the economy to recover.

“We have now the brand of Ukraine developed and well known around the world. But it’s not associated with tourism.”

“People think about Ukraine – maybe about bravery, about war, about destruction. So they see the picture that Ukraine looks like Mariupol, for example.

“We have many cities look like this, but it’s around 20 per cent or 30 per cent of territory that is occupied.

“The rest is alright. It’s very beautiful. We have good infrastructure and we have very good hotels, good service, internet coverage.

“We need to create interest to Ukraine not just as people that you support and you feel sorry for – but also the country you want to support by visiting.

“We don’t know when. We don’t know if it’s going to be in this year, or next year or in two years.

“We have this time to prepare, to have plans – even though they are on hold for this moment. But we know how to act from the moment when Ukrainian borders and Ukrainian skies open again.”

Ms Oleskiv took up her position in March 2020 – on the eve of an anticipated speedy enlargement of flights from the UK and elsewhere. But new hyperlinks to Odessa that each Ryanair and Wizz Air have been promoting from London have been scuppered by the Covid pandemic.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, halting all tourism from overseas.

Remarkably, Ukrainians are nonetheless taking holidays, Ms Oleskiv mentioned.

“We still have tourism – domestic tourism – in Ukraine. And this is something that helps us also to cope with everything that that is going on in our country.

“We have cafes, bars, restaurants, working. We have hotels open and actually during last winter, when we had blackout, very often the hotels were that place where people could have food, charge their phones because they all had generators.”

“People do travel, they travel with families with kids from the destinations that are less safe to destinations that are more safe: in the Carpathian mountains, western central Ukraine.

“This is something that keeps us our mental health being alright and being OK.”

But the chair of the Ukrainian tourism physique careworn that guests from overseas ought to keep away till the struggle is over: “Not now. We are not inviting anybody now because of many reasons. First of all, logistics are very complicated. And insurance companies do not cover risks in Ukraine. So even if you get flu somewhere in Ukraine that is not related to war, it would not be covered by most of insurance companies. So we’re not inviting anyone here.”

Ms Oleskiv mentioned tourism would resume “as soon as the flights are renewed and we can talk about complete safety in certain regions”.

Last month Ryanair renewed its pledge to arrange a large-scale air operation within the three key vacationer cities of Kyiv, Lviv and Odessa inside six weeks of a ceasefire.

“That would be very important for the industry,” Ms Oleskiv mentioned.

Before the Russian invasion, the three cities attracted the overwhelming majority of worldwide guests to Ukraine. But the nation is eager to diversify.

“In 2021 – that was still Covid – we developed a new tourist route to the Carpathian mountains for tourists from Saudi Arabia,” the tourism boss mentioned.

“They really loved it. We have very good resorts there, green with a lot of rain, nice weather. And we had plans for 2022 to triple the quantity of tourists.

“But of course Russia started the war and we couldn’t do this.

“We are working with other destinations that are nature sites, that are rural tourism, to develop their product, to train them to provide better service now for domestic tourists – but to get ready and to be ready to later also welcome international tourists.”

Chernobyl, the location of a nuclear reactor explosion in 1986, was one of many main sights for guests earlier than the Russian invasion. But Ms Oleskiv mentioned it will likely be off limits for a while.

“There was a Russian invasion through that territory. It was mined in order not to let them in again.”

But she mentioned: “We don’t want to develop ‘dark tourism’. We want to tell people the history of this war and the story of people and also show the consequences and Russian war crimes. Our main audience is future generations.”

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